Hello and happy new 2020!!
I'm not gonna lie, 2019 was a tough year for me, quite a few things didn't work out as I expected while I wasn't brave enough to face others.
However, there are definitely some positive takeaways. Here's a little summary of my 2019's resolutions:
📕 Read 28/40 books. Read on 95% of the days!
👥 Met 846/1000 people. Met new ppl on 61% of the days!
🚀 Grew my indie biz everyday.app from $1.2k/mo to $4.8k/mo. Worked on it 100% of the days!
💪 Did 14840 push-ups. Did push-ups on 100% of days.
I also and most importantly managed to work on everyday.app every day! Some of the days, the workload was almost irrelevant but still worth it enough for me to feel like I had moved a little bit forward!
When it comes to everyday.app, 2019 was definitely a good year. The mobile apps got super polished which earned the iOS app a feature on the AppStore's frontpage of the iOS13 release 12x-ing the traffic for a full month... ah... if only you could just be featured all year long ;D
Now that I'm just a few days away from the third anniversary of me writing the first line of the back then called everydayCheck, I've put things in perspective to realize how important the long term game is. It feels like my little daily efforts have kept on compounding to get the app to where it is now. Now, don't get me wrong, I've still got a loooooong way to go, but when I think about how unattainable this situation felt back then, I'm still amazed. My mindset has changed so much with each burnt phase (initial idea, first payment, first renewal, getting featured, experimenting with prices, storytelling...) it's even hard to recognize some of my old journaling writings... ah... that 2017 IndieHackers interview looks from another decade now ;D
I think a lot of people give up on ideas too early. Even here on IndieHackers we can see repetitive patterns of ideas (what the hell, for the sake of an example, I'm working on a habit tracker!) and I think in most cases the main differentiator between an idea, a nice side-project and a real business is the amount of long-term invested time. I now realize I could have made solid businesses out of most of my previous sideprojects...
My point here is, unless you are really sure you are going nowhere, work on your project everyday a little bit, for a very long time.
PS: By the way, I decided to start the year launching Everyday 2.0 on ProductHunt so make sure to check it out :)
PS2: IndieHackers has definitely played an important role for inspiration and learning to avoid some of our major pitfalls (If you haven't read Rob's post, please stop reading this right now and do it). Organizing the IH Barcelona Meetup with Tair and Domingo has brought a new dimension into indiehackerism for me. It's like satiating the necessity of finding your identity and your bunch all at once! Make sure to join us when you are in town!
Top comments (9)
Hey, good job on the app. I use something similar myself and there's a feature I would love to suggest.
I use it to track the days I go to the gym but some days I workout for half the time.
But I still have to 'tick' it as done. Like, even you said how some days your work on the app was almost irrelevant. Maybe you can add a feature to track the intensity of work.
I know this is almost irrelevant and bit extra to what you're going for, but it's definitely a problem worth taking up. (ex how to create the best UX for such a task, currently you only have a single click but this feature would make that complicated )
Exactly! The problem of all these microfeatures is that they have very specific use cases and every new feature compounds into serious complexity at many levels: communication, design, etc.
Without disregarding your suggestion (which is already on my list of 'problems to ponder') I think this feature is a) against the mindset I want to communicate and b) covered for.
By a) I mean that my mission with the app is to get people to do it every day (trust me, that's a pretty ambitious goal already). So doing it just a little bit is already a win from my point of view. b) Some people do use skips for days when they don't feel they achieved their daily goal (i.e did 20 push-ups instead of 50)
Inspiring stuff man, I will look you up on Indiehackers as well.
Congrats man - 5k MRR is a big step. Think I will be joining you on indie hackers soon 😊
Joined! Will get the app soon! Cool idea and appears very well done as far as I can tell so far 👍👍👍
Awesome! Feel free to shoot me any feedback any time :-)
Congrats on your success. I've become a user of your app after reading this post. Very nicely designed app.
Obligatory question: What tech stack do you use?
Thanks Tony! I hope the app's helping :)
For the web app, React, redux, webpack, sass.
API is koajs, knex
mobile apps are developed in react native
How do you make any money with this app